8' x 10'1" Pakistani Ziegler Rug | Wool | Pale Sand and Pastel

A hand-knotted rug of 8' x 10'1" in natural wool, woven in Pakistan. The whole piece sits in a narrow band of pale colour: a sand and wheat field carrying an allover pattern that reads more as texture than as drawing until you stand over it. At a distance the rug looks close to plain, which is what the spec table means by pastels making the details look plain.

Design

The field carries a Ziegler pattern of linked ogival arches, each one drawn with a thin beaded vine that rises to a point and drops again, so the field is divided into rows of arched compartments across its width. Inside each arch sits a small palmette or vase-shaped flowerhead flanked by paired leaves, with single rosettes and tiny cross-shaped blossoms filling the spaces between the arcs. The main border runs a meandering stem with alternating rosettes and split palmettes, framed on both sides by narrow guard stripes of small repeating flowerheads, and the ends finish in plain ivory fringe.

Colour

The ground is a light wheat, warming to a faint honey tone where the pile lies one way and cooling to oatmeal where it lies the other. Against it the drawing is worked in pale celadon and a soft blue-grey, with outlines in light taupe and small touches of faded apricot that are easiest to see in the border rosettes and along the guard stripes. Nothing in the palette steps forward; the contrast between motif and ground is a shade or two at most, which is why the pattern reads clearly only in raking light or from directly above.

Making

This is a new, hand-knotted piece with a pile of natural wool, in good order throughout, with even pile depth and straight selvedges. The reverse shows regular knot rows and the design coming through cleanly on the back, and the fold in the photographs gives a fair reading of the handle: firm but supple, with a short, dense pile. The rectangular format and the unworn condition are what they appear to be in the images, and it sits among the other hand-knotted rugs here in the lightest end of the colour range.